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<blockquote data-quote="KesselZero" data-source="post: 5857166" data-attributes="member: 6689976">The example that springs to mind is the Checkered Knight from Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion stuff, a guy who occasionally pops in to maintain the balance between Law and Chaos (and symbolically wears black-and-white checkered armor). Moorcock's protagonists tend to fight for one or the other, and the Checkered Knight is always a mysterious NPC.&nbsp;Given that Moorcock was an Appendix N influence, and IIRC the Checkered Knight appears in the Hawkmoon books that are specifically called out by Gygax, this may be a clue to the original intent of &quot;neutral&quot; in D&amp;D, especially since Moorcock was the guy who popularized the law-chaos axis, using it exclusively in place of good and evil. Law and Chaos could both be &quot;good&quot; or &quot;evil&quot; depending on the situation and conflict at hand, which may also have influenced the nine-point grid of D&amp;D-- the classic example of Lawful Evil being a fascist society in which individuality is brutally repressed but the trains run on time. In Moorcock this would just be an expression of Law, which hopefully some brave protagonist dedicated to Chaos would overthrow!</blockquote>

[QUOTE="KesselZero, post: 5857166, member: 6689976"] The example that springs to mind is the Checkered Knight from Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion stuff, a guy who occasionally pops in to maintain the balance between Law and Chaos (and symbolically wears black-and-white checkered armor). Moorcock's protagonists tend to fight for one or the other, and the Checkered Knight is always a mysterious NPC. Given that Moorcock was an Appendix N influence, and IIRC the Checkered Knight appears in the Hawkmoon books that are specifically called out by Gygax, this may be a clue to the original intent of "neutral" in D&D, especially since Moorcock was the guy who popularized the law-chaos axis, using it exclusively in place of good and evil. Law and Chaos could both be "good" or "evil" depending on the situation and conflict at hand, which may also have influenced the nine-point grid of D&D-- the classic example of Lawful Evil being a fascist society in which individuality is brutally repressed but the trains run on time. In Moorcock this would just be an expression of Law, which hopefully some brave protagonist dedicated to Chaos would overthrow! [/QUOTE]

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